As part of a joint project between the Because of Them, We Can initiative and Nickelodeon, in which kids portray distinguished African Americans, young girls in this video pay tribute to poet Maya Angelou.

The Oscars may be over, but the advice shared by these women on the red carpet will last a lifetime. Hollywood stars, including Margaret Avery and Felicity Jones, urge women and girls not to let Hollywood or any industry define who they are. [via BuzzFeed]

Despite numerous bans on gay “conversion therapy” across the country, some organizations continue to provide discredited practices they say can “cure” same-sex attractions in their clients. In part one of Vice’s investigation into organizations that purport to “convert” gay people, Vice visits Journey Into Manhood, a weekend long retreat “designed specifically for men who are self-motivated and serious about resolving unwanted homosexual attractions.” [via Vice]

On this episode of Reality Cast, Renee Bracey Sherman talks about her abortion storytelling advocacy. Also, host Amanda Marcotte looks at why everyone at Fox News is so hostile to equal pay, and the abortion storyline in a recent episode of Girls.

On this episode of Reality Cast, Ian Millhiser talks about how the Obama administration is quietly winning court battles in favor of contraception. Also, host Amanda Marcotte shares clips from Irin Carmon’s interview with Justice Ginsburg and discusses how Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t the first movie to romanticize abusive relationship patterns.

On this episode of Reality Cast, host Amanda Marcotte chats with Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, creator of the “Stop Telling Women to Smile” art project, about her recent work in Mexico City, where she was joined by Fusion editor Anna Holmes. In another segment, Marcotte looks at the claim that the movie Frozen oppresses men.

The West Virginia Senate last week passed a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks, four weeks before a fetus is widely recognized as “viable,” the standard for legally-protected abortion in the United States.

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott said he would take no action if the Affordable Care Act is gutted as the U.S. Supreme Court decision that could cut off access to affordable health care for millions looms.

Dozens of college students and reproductive justice activists met with lawmakers in Austin Thursday morning, asking them to support comprehensive sex ed, increase access to legal abortion care, and give doctors more leeway to make medically sound decisions about their patients.

Contrary to the narratives being pushed by some in the activism community, the win in the fight for net neutrality wasn’t because liberals managed to somehow “want” it badly enough. This was not a matter of willpower, but one of enormous force, bluntly applied.

Can the abortion rate be reduced by improving social services? New data from the Brookings Institution suggests that answer is no, which makes sense: Women have abortions for more complex reasons than simply being too poor to parent.

Among this year’s attempts at conservative “humor”: Sean Hannity’s X-ray utero-vision, Ted Cruz’s quip about not beating his wife, and the guy from Duck Dynasty calling STIs “the revenge of the hippies.”

Our right-wing state lawmakers are so proudly hateful that they actually celebrated banning marriage equality by cutting a cake. They’ve also already filed a slate of oppressive and unnecessary legislation this session.

Some advocates are calling the Food and Drug Administration’s historical hesitation to approve a drug that would treat low sex drive in women sexist; others are saying the development of the medication itself is sexist. Who’s in the right?

Supporters of the “men’s rights” movement claim to want to defend the interests of men in a supposedly female-dominated society. But if you give them a chance to share their views in a mainstream setting, their underlying misogyny becomes immediately apparent.

Black women do not expect much from those whose inhumane social, political, and economic interests challenge our human rights, but we do expect respect, support, and trust from our progressive allies, who supposedly are on our side.

As much as we may want to laugh about the possibility that Idaho state Rep. Vito Barbieri did not know that the uterus is not part of the digestive system, a lack of understanding of basic anatomy can have enormous consequences on both a personal and legislative level.

Social conservatives have been getting more obvious about bullying women into accepting their self-sacrificing, self-effacing model of womanhood. They’re having to get louder because fewer women are listening.

To put it plainly, white people, including white women, have advantages simply by virtue of their skin color—advantages that I will never have. These advantages are often invisible. These advantages are also unearned. And that’s why talking to someone who has never considered their privilege about the fact that they have privilege can be so jarring for them.

With her words on Sunday night—whether intentional or not (and personally, I believe it was unintentional)—Patricia Arquette gave voice to a system of structural erasure that has been the gold standard in the feminist movement since well before Sojourner Truth stood up and declared “Ain’t I A Woman?”

“The IWF has never taken a stance on abortion,” executive director Sabrina Schaeffer wrote in an email to RH Reality Check. Certainly, that is IWF’s public position. But RHRC has found that the IWF’s behind-the-scenes relationship with anti-choice groups contradicts what its spokespeople say.

As state legislative sessions gear up for what could be one of the worst years on record for reproductive rights, anti-choice lawmakers across the country have in recent weeks filed barrages of laws that would restrict access to safe and legal abortion. Many of these laws are identical, or nearly so, to laws that have repeatedly failed in the same states where they are being reintroduced.

The emails show Texas’ key consultant putting words into the mouths of the state’s so-called expert witnesses, attempting to persuade them to selectively exclude data that did not match his anti-choice bias, and, in one case, walking extremely close to the line of outright ghostwriting what were supposed to be independent reports.

From a 21-year-old who first saw the need for sex ed when he was the only out gay man at his Catholic school in Louisiana, to the 27-year-old web editor of one of the most popular love and relationship sites in India, these young activists are leading local sexual and reproductive health and rights movements around the world.

The law provides an expansive host of benefits, including requirements that employers provide basic accommodations for pregnant workers. To get a better sense of this law and the strategy that made it win, RH Reality Check spoke with Debra Fitzpatrick of the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs.